Sakurai discusses the importance of fun in game design, explains how he arrived at the idea for Kirby's Air Ride

Sakurai is back once again with his latest Famitsu feature. This time he takes a look at game design and sussing out fun mechanics. You can read a summary of the interview below, courtesy of PushDustIn and Sephazon.

- conceptualizing a unique idea for a game is the difficult part
- it's even more difficult figuring out how to express the fun factor of the game in the planning process
- in some cases, games will capitalize on the same game style as their predecessors
- for the purposes of this feature, Sakurai decides to explore how you can make drifting fun in a game with vehicles
- if you start with the notion that drifting can’t be fun, then you hold back the potential
- the fun factor is easy to mess up
- if you were to think about why drifting is fun on a fundamental level, it’s because there is a risk
- you could potentially make drifting more fun by adding in greater speeds, but this approach is a bit too basic
- you could make it possible to accelerate by gathering power while drifting and then releasing it all at once at corners
- this is the thought process that led Sakurai to Kirby Air Ride
- Sakurai says that understanding why it feels good to control an air board or glider is key to the process
- these concepts combine to create a balanced design
- devs should dig deep to understand what makes an element fun, and then rebuilding based on that in order to make a concept
- the person who plans a video game is the director, but it’s important to understand what makes the video game fun at the start
- when you build a game around the element of “fun,” many obstacles and challenges become clear
- in order to separate the project from other titles, Sakurai believes understanding what makes different games fun is crucial